Scott of the Antarctic – Richard Reaney

Rose Chapman: It’s a pleasure to introduce our speaker, Mr Richard Reaney, who’s an expert on the ill-fated expedition of Sir [Captain]  Robert Falcon Scott …

Richard Reaney: Posthumously.

Rose: Posthumously; to reach the South Pole in 1912. Richard has long had a great interest in Scott, and he’s recently published a book which discusses the expedition, and particularly the decisions that Scott made which led to the tragedy. Richard has been to Antarctica many times and is a graduate of Antarctic studies. He’s been a visiting scholar in that same topic at Cambridge University, so I think you can see we’ve got a real expert here today. So thank you for coming, Richard, and I’ll hand over the floor to you.

Richard: Well good morning everyone. A little bit Antarctic out there today. [Chuckles] Rose, thank you very much for the invitation to be here and join you. It’s always a pleasure to get away from work and come and do this sort of thing. What I’d like to do this morning is talk a little bit about the book, and then I have a presentation of Scott’s journey to the South Pole showing some of the original photographs that were taken on his expedition; and then some of my own photographs taken in the Antarctic, covering the spots where Scott lived and part of his journey, too, across the ice.

So just a little bit first of all about the book, and for those who are not familiar with the story, or have forgotten it, I just would like to just briefly background Scott’s journey. As many of you know, the era of Antarctic exploration in the early part of the twentieth century was known as the Heroic Era, and there was good reason for that, because it was the era before mechanisation. There were no phones, there was no radio, the petrol engine was in its infancy; and you know, when an expedition left for the south, left New Zealand … for many of them they did … they literally left civilisation, and there was absolutely no contact with the outside world. So they were going down to brave the elements without all the modern machinery, equipment or communications that we have today. And for many of those expeditions, they were going to be their own transport; they were going to drag the sledges themselves. Um, of course we know that the Norwegians were expert dog handlers, but for the British, they still hung on to that era of man hauling their sledges. It was an era when we had people like Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian; we had Borchgrevink, the Norwegian; there was Douglas Mawson, the Australian, and one or two others that really formed that era. Shackleton was a big part of that too. The Americans didn’t come ‘til later, ‘til Richard Byrd came in 1929, and his era was known as the age of mechanisation, where he brought tractors and he brought aircraft.

Now late in Captain Scott’s planning for his expedition, which was started in 1910, he realised that he was going to be in a race. Amundsen informed him that he too had made the decision to head south to try and get to the South Pole, and Amundsen did this quietly; he didn’t tell anybody. His planning all along had been to go to the North Pole; he wanted to be first at the North Pole, but in 1908, 1909 as we know, two Americans came back and claimed the North Pole. There was Peary and there was Cook, and ‘til this day there is still argument as to who got there first between those two. And there’s quite interesting discussions and often even conferences and meetings in America about that controversy.

Anyway, Scott made his planning to go and land in the New Zealand area; the McMurdo / Ross Ice Shelf area; set up a base and go for the Pole. He planned to do that in the summer of 1911, 1912. Now he reached the Pole on the 18th January 1912, but Amundsen got there on the 14th December 1911, so he beat Scott by a month. He returned to civilisation and announced his success to the world. Now, Scott never returned; he and his entire polar party perished on their return journey. We believe that they died around the 29th March 1912. Now it had to be another whole season before a search party could go out, so it wasn’t ‘til late November in 1912 that a search party found the bodies of Scott and of two companions, Wilson and Bowers. Now the bodies of the other two were never found, and today they’ve still not been found. But when the news of Scott’s death was announced to the world, the British nation seemed to go into mourning. It was an amazing thing that they held Scott’s death up as the supreme example of the dead hero; of that self-sacrifice in the face of adversity. And as a result a legend was born, and that legend really has existed for nearly seventy or eighty years since 1912.

In 1979 a polar researcher by the name of Roland Huntford wrote a book ‘Scott and Amundsen’, and he compared the two expeditions. And in essence his seven-hundred-page volume begs the question, ‘How could they be so different?’ Amundsen made his journey look like a walk in the park, whereas Scott made his a death sentence. But what Huntford’s work did do – it sparked a whole new generation of publications of Scott and of Amundsen. Now I’ve re-read and read a good many of those publications, and none of them in my view, looked at the expedition in critical detail and asked some of the tough questions. The British Royal Geographical Society were responsible for arranging the publication of Scott’s last expedition, which came out in 1913; now, we now know that there are a number of mistakes in that publication; there are a number of omissions, and that the Royal Geographic Society Committee were responsible for sanitising quite a bit of Scott’s diary so that they put the best face on it for public consumption in Edwardian England. I wanted to get to the truth as far as it was possible, to try and get into Scott’s mind and understand why he made the decisions he did, and of course account for his actions.

So why did Scott and his men die? Was it his transport? His clothing? His diet? We know that Scott’s food was inadequate, but things like Vitamin C were unknown at that time. It was to be another twenty years before Vitamin C was isolated. But the ravages of scurvy were well known and also the treatment of scurvy was known, and how to prevent at that time. Was it poor leadership? Was Scott mentally fit enough for the expedition? Or was it the cold? One polar writer, Susan Solomon, devoted a whole book just to this issue. Was it poor planning and lack of experience? When Scott arrived in the Antarctic, only one member of his expedition was proficient on skis. Or was it just plain bad luck, and the elements were against him? ‘The Scott Disaster’ looks at all these questions, and I hope for the reader goes some distance in answering them and giving an understanding as to why the polar party ended their journey with the loss of the whole five. So, just an outline of the book.

Now with Scott’s journey I have the presentation here, which I’d like to show. [Shows slides]

This is Commander Scott. In 1901-1904 Scott went to the Antarctic in the first British expedition there for sixty years, called the ‘Discovery Expedition’. He at that stage was a Commander, and he led the Discovery Expedition. It was an expedition that attempted to make the furtherest south towards the South Pole, and he and a chap by the name of Edward Wilson and Ernest Shackleton made a journey southward to 82o 17 minutes; and at that stage it was the furtherest south in either the North or the South Polar regions. So his Discovery Expedition was deemed a success. Scott appeared to have learnt a great deal; he didn’t make the same mistake twice and he appeared to become proficient in understanding living conditions in the Polar environment.

Now, this is now Captain Scott in 1910 heading up the expedition called the ‘Terra Nova Expedition’ after his ship; and as you’ll see there, Scott very proudly is wearing the Polar Medal, which he earned for his Discovery Expedition. Now, his plan was to come down into the Ross Sea. He left from Port Lyttelton. He did call at Port Chalmers on the way to coal the ship, and then headed south into the Ross Sea. So he set off here from Lyttelton, came to Port Chalmers and then came all the way down into the Ross Sea. Now, just about the Antarctic Circle here, he met what’s known as the pack ice. And of course in the winter around the Antarctic continent – right around – the entire sea will freeze, sometimes up to a thousand miles out. And then in November/December of each year the ice starts to break up and the pack ice floats away; so getting through the pack ice is important of course, to get to the continent. So any ship going down needs to think about entering the pack around about the middle of December, or end of December. So Scott came through the pack and he came to Ross Island here. Now Ross Island is held in the Ross Ice Shelf and it was a suitable spot to set up his base to make an attempt on the South Pole.

Now as I’ve said, Roald Amundsen also planned to go to the Pole and try and beat Scott. He came down and set up on the Ross Ice Shelf, just over here in a place called the Bay of Whales, then head up there towards the South Pole. Now what’s interesting here, Amundsen had to find his own way to the Pole, in other words, take a whole new journey and find a way through the mountains.

Scott was going to follow Shackleton. Now Shackleton, in 1908/1909, had led his own expedition towards the South Pole, and he had gone across the ice shelf, gone up through the mountains here; got to within ninety-seven miles of the Pole, ran out of food, and had to return and bring all his party back. So Scott had the benefit of Shackleton’s journey, so he was able to follow someone who had previously showed him the way.

And this is Scott’s ship, the ‘Terra Nova’, in the pack ice of the Ross Sea, and you can see some of the men are out on the ice there. It was an opportunity where they needed to get familiar with ice – some of these men had come from India; one had come from Africa; they really had not any previous experience in [chuckles] snow and ice, so it was a time for them to adjust to it.

Roald Amundsen … Captain Amundsen, the Norwegian … had spent his life developing his skills as an explorer. For those who know anything about Amundsen, he was the first man to sail the Northwest Passage; 1904 to 1906. That’s his base at the Bay of Whales, called Framheim, and the gentleman standing over here is Helmer Hanssen. Although Amundsen really didn’t have a Second-in-Command, it was generally acknowledged amongst his men that Helmer Hanssen acted as the Second-in-Command. And one of the things fortunate for Amundsen, he had an abundance of seals at the Bay of Whales, which of course he needed very much. Amundsen took a hundred dogs to the Antarctic, and his journey to the South Pole started off with fifty-two of them, so the seals provided much food for the dogs.

Now this is the geographic map of Ross Island – it is, as you can see, a French map, but it just shows the points of the Island … the historical points … very well. When Shackleton came down, he based his hut – and it’s still there today – at Cape Royds. When Scott came he based his hut at Cape Evans for the Terra Nova Expedition. When Scott came for his Discovery Expedition, the very first one, he made his base just here at the end of Cape Armitage, and today that’s where the American base, McMurdo, is; and just round the corner on that little point just there known as Pram Point, is where Scott Base is today – the New Zealand base.

Now that’s Cape Evans. This is my shot taken in 1994; and like we all did in those days, we used film for our photography, and transferring to digital unfortunately is not as good as the modern digital is today. But what was interesting there – I went over to Cape Evans on a dog sled … New Zealand base. We were one of the last nations to have dogs in the Antarctic; on 1st April 1994 all dogs were removed from the Antarctic. The Antarctic Treaty decided that they were not an indigenous animal and they needed to be removed, so it was agreed that all nations would remove their huskies from the continent by that date. And this is the last dog sledge; this was February 1994, going over to the hut. And when I first went in, the hut was dilapidated and it was full of snow … snow and ice … and it was distressing to see. I joined with a gentleman by the name of Nigel Watson, who today is the director of the Antarctic Heritage Trust in Christchurch, to see what could be done, and as you know the Antarctic Heritage Trust has taken on the responsibility of looking after all the historic huts in the McMurdo area including Shackleton’s, and including Borchgrevink’s as well. So when I went back again a lot of work had been done; the roof had been redone and it really is a delight to see the order that has been restored in those amazingly historical huts. I mean it’s now over … well, nearly a hundred years old, and it’s still standing, and it was only designed to last a season.

Now that’s a shot taken out on the Ross Ice Shelf; you can see the ice … the blue ice … through there; the snow recently falling, just sort of blowing in the flurries. That’s of course the famous Mount Erebus; Hut Point and Scott Base is just over there.

Now what’s deceptive here is that the atmosphere in the Antarctic is extremely dry; it’s absolutely devoid of any moisture. It’s so cold there’s no moisture in the atmosphere, so distances are distorted. What looks like probably about five or six miles away – that is thirty-eight miles away; where I’m standing on the ice to the foot of Mount Erebus, so it’s very clear. You can, on an exceptionally good day, see up to a hundred miles in the Antarctic.

The men that went with Scott: this is Edward Wilson, who was with Scott in the Polar party and who died with Scott. He was the head of the scientific contingent that Scott took down to the Antarctic – an amazing man; a real tragedy that he died. He was a wonderful artist and we have some wonderful work of his of scenes in the Antarctic; but a great scientist and he was a great loss to the scientific community. A tough, tough Irishman.

Some of you who’ve read the work may know that that’s Tom Crean. Tom Crean was a Petty Officer. He was with Scott in the Discovery Expedition; he went with Shackleton on the 1914/17 expedition of ‘Endurance’; but a man who was very, very much the perfect polar explorer. If you were a polar explorer you would want him in your team, and to give you an idea of the toughness, he was one of the members of the last supporting party to Scott; and he and Bill Lashly and Edward Evans were returning to base after taking supplies to Scott on to the plateau. Evans came down badly with scurvy and nearly died, and Lashly and Crean carried him for a hundred miles on the sledge to get to safety. Lashly and Crean got to the point where they couldn’t drag him any further; they were thirty miles from the base, so Crean decided that he would leave Lashly with Evans and he would walk solo, with no tent, no food, a couple of biscuits, to try and get help. He walked the thirty miles in eighteen hours, and brought help back, and of course saved Evans’ life. And as a result Crean and Lashly won the Albert Medal which was the highest civil award for bravery at that time. Tough man.

That is Edgar Evans – it is a little confusing on Scott’s expedition; he had two Evanses. He had Lieutenant Evans, who was his Second-in-Command, and he had Seaman Evans, Henry Evans, who Scott admired as a tough man. And he was part of the polar party, and of course perished on the return journey too.

And this man here, who was the ski instructor; he was the only one proficient on skis, and he was a Norwegian. When Scott went to Norway to test out his motor sledges he was persuaded by the Norwegian, Nanson, to take a ski expert to teach his men how to ski. And this was Tryggve Gran, the Norwegian ski expert. Unfortunately, when Scott learned of the competition coming from Amundsen he tended to take his frustrations out on the nearest Norwegian, which unfortunately was Tryggve Gran.

He took dogs as part of his transport; he took two dog teams and he took a dog expert, Cecil Meares; and that’s Cecil at Hut Point, with Erebus in the background with the dog sleds.

He took ponies, and that’s Captain Oates who was also a member of the polar party, looking after the ponies. Oates was not a seaman; Oates was an army man of the Inniskilling Dragoons, and he had fought in the Boer War; had been wounded in the war, had seen death and suffering, so he was a tough man as well. But his job was to look after the ponies, which he did very well.

And he took motor sledges, and these were very much in their infancy. He took three; two of them made it ashore off the ship; the third one, when it was unloaded onto the sea ice, sank through the ice and today sits on the bottom of McMurdo Sound. But he took two and that’s Bernard Day, who was in charge of the motor sledges. Now, also the refining of petrol was at that stage not as advanced of course as it is today; and those are the petrol cans that are today still sitting at Cape Evans. And I’ve examined them and found that the fuel is contaminated, and I am suspicious without taking a sample that it’s seawater. And then in my research I found that the petrol was deck cargo on the ‘Terra Nova’ when it came down. And we know in the storm in the Southern Ocean when it left New Zealand that some of those cans were lost, and I’m suspicious that some of the seals have corroded – or did corrode and weren’t as efficient and some sea water did seep in, so that would account possibly for some of the failure of the motor sledges.

And of course the final means of transport … manhauling. And that’s the polar party there before they took on the fifth man.

Ernest Henry Shackleton – great explorer; a man who put his men first before the goal. Much admired as a natural leader. As I’ve said, in 1908 he led his expedition to the Pole. They came up short; he decided that it was better to return with all his men alive rather than go for the Pole, knowing there was every chance they’d never return and that they’d all die. And his hut today is there at Cape Royds and again, that’s looked after by the Antarctic Heritage Trust of New Zealand. But Shackleton could’ve provided Scott with a great deal of help and a great deal of information, but Scott and Shackleton unfortunately fell out with each other on that Discovery Expedition, and Scott never spoke to Shackleton again.

Now here is Hut Point, or the Cape Armitage Peninsula. That’s the big McMurdo base today, the American Base; and down here is Scott’s discovery hut. When he came in in the ship ‘Discovery’, he moored the ship here. This is frozen sea, and he moored the ship right here, and they built this hut ashore for stores and to give men an opportunity to have recreation ashore you might say, instead of living permanently on the ship.

Just by a matter of interest, this here is an iceberg and it’s been frozen in by the Americans, and they put gravel on it; and that’s known as the Ice Wharf. And the ship’s the ‘Green Wave’ which is their supply ship; comes in and anchors to that every year. I mean, I’ve got there before the sea ice has gone out to take that photograph, but you can see the town, you might say. It’s called Mactown. Those are the big accommodation units for the staff. During the winter they would have two hundred people there, and during the summer they would have upwards of two thousand people living and working at McMurdo.

And that’s a closeup of the hut, having been restored by the Antarctic Heritage Trust. That’s the second oldest building in the Antarctic, and that’s been there since 1901, so it’s what, a hundred and ten years old. Back to Scott’s hut at Cape Evans – that’s what it’s like today. I was there just a couple of years ago, and you can see the roof has been restored and a tremendous amount of order has been put back in the kitchen. This is the kitchen, or the galley as it was called, and the cook was a man called Thomas Glisshold. Now for some of you that might mean something … Thomas Glisshold, after the expedition, came back and lived in Napier, and his house still stands on the corner of Thackeray Street and Georges Drive in Napier today, and he lived there for many years.

And this is the bunk area, the Tenements [cough] as it was called. And just a flashback in time – that’s the men in it: Atkinson the doctor; that’s Meares; that’s Oates, and that’s Birdie Bowers, and that’s Cherry-Garrard, who wrote the great book ‘The Worst Journey in the World’. And that’s the main table, and that’s what’s known as the Wardroom. Scott maintained true naval discipline – he separated the officers from the men, so the men slept in another part and the officers in the other part. The officers dined in the Wardroom, whereas the men dined in the mess, and neither the two would meet; there was a wall between the two. But Scott maintained that amazingly.

And here is the flashback again – this is Scott’s last birthday on the 6th June 1911, and just to name some of the names here for you because I know that a lot of you are interested in the story: this here is Atkinson; that’s Meares; there’s Cherry-Garrard; this is Oates; this here is Griffiths-Taylor; Nelson there next to him, the biologist; that is Evans, Scott, and Wilson here; George Simpson, the meteorologist; Birdie Bowers; this is Wright … Silas Wright, the Canadian, who was the physicist; Frank Debenham who was responsible for getting the Scott Polar Research Institute in England built; and we’ve got here Bernard Day; and the other standing one, again non-naval – it’s interesting that the two non-naval people are standing – and that’s Tryggve Gran, the Norwegian. And again, just a fisheye view of the hut there; the best I could do to try and encompass it all. This is Scott’s den; Wilson’s was around the corner, but that’s Scott’s den there where he slept and then, of course, wrote up his diary; there’s a famous photograph of him.

Now, Scott’s journey to the Pole. His plan was to leave towards the end of October, and make his journey to the Pole. We know in those early months when the sun comes back – because in the winter it’s twenty-four hour darkness – and when the sun comes back in September you’ve got an opportunity to go out and explore. The problem in September is that the temperatures can still range down to -50 Celsius, so it’s no fun in being out there early. Amundsen tried to get out and leave in September for the Pole; he got as far as 80o South. His men suffered badly; the dogs suffered badly; he realised it was a mistake and went back to Framheim and waited until late October before he left.

Scott already knew this because of Shackleton’s experience, and he left on the 1st November for his journey to the Pole. So he came out of Cape Evans, onto the ice shelf, made his journey across the ice shelf to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier; his journey then was up the Beardmore Glacier, across the plateau to the South Pole. Now, to give you an idea of size, the Ross Ice Shelf is an enormous shelf of ice; it’s as big as France. It’s the same area as the size of France; so it’s four hundred miles from here to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. The hope was that the sledges would make the distance; one sledge petered out after a few miles; one motor sledge made fifty miles and then it broke down. The ponies that Scott had, his plan was to take them to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier; and for those that were still alive, that hadn’t died on the journey across the ice shelf, he was going to slaughter the rest then. And the journey from then on was going to be by manhauling. [Phone ringing] So for three-quarters of his journey, half of it to the Pole and the whole distance back, he was going to be manhauling.

Amundsen, leaving from the Bay of Whales of course, was going to be coming across the ice shelf with his dogs, and as dogs died he was going to feed the dogs to the other dogs; and if they ran short they would eat the dogs themselves, which they did do; find a way through the mountains, which he did on that glacier called the Axel Heiberg Glacier, a steeper glacier; a gradient of 1:80, whereas Scott had 1:28 feet; and then make his way across the plateau as well.

Now that’s an example of the ice shelf – I’m standing there on the ice shelf, not actually far from Cape Evans; I’m about seven miles out, and what we’re looking at there is the Western Mountains across the other side of McMurdo Sound. So of course in the summer, that entire area of flat ice that you can see, disappears; it breaks up and is carried out. And as we get out on the ice shelf, as you can see we’re heading into a bigger expanse and the mountains are getting further away. And as Scott headed further south on the ice shelf, of course the mountains disappeared from view altogether and didn’t come back into view until he got close to the Beardmore Glacier. On the way they camped in their tent with the support parties – they all had their tents, and they would usually sleep four to a tent, and in this instance we’ve got the photographer making the fifth. But we’ve got Scott here, that’s Wilson, that’s Birdie Bowers and that’s Edgar Evans, so the man who took the photograph was Captain Oates. What did they eat? That’s their ration – that’s one man’s one day ration … biscuit, pemmican, sugar, cocoa, cheese and tea. Pemmican is a mixture of dried beef and fat, and occasionally a little bit of food substance is put inside it … maybe dried cranberries, dried fruit, dried berries of some sort, and it’s all put into the pot at night with water and maybe some other dried peas and cooked up, and then the British called it Hoosh, and you may have read about that. But that’s it; that was their ration.

The ponies suffered dreadfully in the cold on the ice shelf, and at night they would build these walls, the snow walls, to try and protect them, but the ponies did suffer very much.

And arriving at the Beardmore Glacier … this is an aerial shot that I managed to take on a flight out to a scientific group who were working out there … that’s a shot of the entrance to the Beardmore Glacier. It is, we understand, the longest valley glacier in the world; it’s a hundred miles long, or a hundred and sixty kilometres long, and that was the glacier that Shackleton had found and made his way up, and of course Scott was following as well. And that’s when they reduced to manhauling; arduous as it was. Now when they got to the top here, they went up to a height of about nine thousand feet, and then made their way across the plateau towards the Pole.

The last support party here marks – the little cross there is them. They turned round and went back, and that includes the group that I mentioned of Evans, Crean and Bill Lashly. And also a mark here, it’s Shackleton’s further south; you can see he got tantalisingly close at ninety-seven miles short before he turned back. And here at the Pole – Scott made it of course on the 18th January, whereas Amundsen made it on the 14th December.

Now as Scott was making his way to the Pole they passed Shackleton’s further south; and they were in very good spirits because they hadn’t seen any evidence of Amundsen, and they felt sure that Amundsen would also use the Beardmore Glacier. But he never planned to, but they thought he would. And there’d been no sign of him so they felt that they were right in front; and the day before they came across this black marker flag in the snow, and their hearts sank; and they realised that they had been beaten. And when they came up to the marker flag of course, they saw all the dog paw marks in the snow and realised that Amundsen had taken his dogs to the Pole and they were well and truly beaten. So here is them at the Pole finding Amundsen’s tent, with as you can see the Norwegian flag flying. They were pretty dejected naturally, but they did stay there for a day or two and see if they could pinpoint the Pole very much more accurately than Amundsen. But it was clear that Amundsen had done a very good job, and they confirmed that he did succeed in getting to the Pole first.

They took this famous photograph of them all at the Pole. It was taken with [by] Birdie Bowers with a little string there connected to the camera to take the shots so they could get all five of them in there. One of the things that has always interested me about this photograph is that they’re clean-shaven. What a waste of fuel they must’ve had to boil water so they could shave, when fuel was so precious. But they shaved, incredible.

And the journey home – they all followed the journey home that they had followed out. Amundsen went back down the Axel Heiberg and back to the Bay of Whales; he arrived on the 25th January.

Scott came back down through the Beardmore Glacier, but at that stage the cold was really affecting them. What they didn’t realise, or what Scott didn’t realise – they were starving. Their food was not nutritious enough; they were burning over six and a half thousand calories a day and they were only taking in four, so that they were burning up tissue … they were burning up muscle tissue and really just running themselves down. And they’d been out for three months, and that means that scurvy was a risk – and we know with Evans, of course, he suffered from scurvy – but the rest of them were starting to show scurvy signs. And the first of these was Edgar Evans, and he had injured himself on the plateau prior to getting to the Pole where he was shortening the skis for Scott; he gashed his hand badly; and in the cold weather those wounds don’t heal very well. And with Oates who had been wounded in the Boer War – he had been shot in the leg; and in scar tissue we know that Vitamin C is responsible for collagen maturation, and the scar tissue began to break down and the wound began to open because of the lack of Vitamin C.

So the first to die was Evans, and he died at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier on the 17th February. The rest of the party then trudged on, and then Oates, who was suffering badly, had a frozen leg, and he asked to be left behind. The others said we [they] weren’t going to do that, and they asked him just to keep going. Wilson knew very well that Oates was not going to make it, and Oates decided on the morning of the 17th March, which was his birthday, that he would get up and leave the tent and hope that that would give the others a chance to save their own lives. So on 17th March, Oates made that famous speech, that “I’m just going outside; I may be some time”; and was never seen again.

The rest of the party trundled on for another fifteen miles, then pitched their tent and then were hit by a storm. And at this stage they were running out of food; they certainly ran out of fuel. And there was talk that they may try and get to their depot which was just eleven miles away, get food and bring it back to Scott who at that stage was losing his leg through frostbite, but in the end the storm raged and they all stayed in the tent. And of course Scott then made his famous diary entries that have survived today. So they were a hundred and forty miles from base, from back to Cape Evans, and just eleven miles from One Ton depot.

And there’s J C Dollman’s famous painting that today stands in the Royal Guards and Calvary [Cavalry] Club in London, and that’s his depiction of Oates going to his death in the storm. And some of you’ve read … that’s Scott’s last entry in his diary that: ‘We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R Scott.’ Last entry: ‘For God’s sake look after our people.’ Scott was very concerned about his family, about his wife and his new son, and about the dependence on all the other members, so that was one of the things that he was keen to see, that they were all taken care of knowing that he was not going to make it home. And as I’ve said, the search party went out and found the bodies in November of 1912, and they built the snow cairn. They collapsed the tents and left the bodies where they were, took the diaries and the other information and built the cairn with the cross over the top of the bodies there, and that’s the photograph of it. The little cairn here with the sledge in it was built for Oates; now they went the fifteen miles further south to try and find Oates’ body, but they never found it. But what they did find was a sleeping bag, which is interesting. I would’ve thought that the wind would’ve taken care of that. But they did find a sleeping bag, but certainly not his body; so that was the cairn built to Oates.

And coming back to McMurdo, that’s Observation Peak that you can see there – it’s about twelve hundred feet high. And on the top of that is where the men of the expedition erected the nine-foot-high jarrah timber cross as a memorial to Scott and his men. And for those who ever get there – it is a wee bit of a climb, but I got up there; and the weather changed as it tends to do in the Antarctic very quickly. And that’s standing on top of the peak at the cross, and McMurdo down below there.

In researching the book and over the years having the chance to meet people, it’s been one of the pleasures to ask questions, pick their brains; and some of you will probably recognise this man – that’s Sir Vivian Fuchs, who you will remember in 1956, ‘57, ‘58 led the trans-Antarctic [coughing] expedition, in which Ed Hillary took part. Vivian, a wonderful mind of knowledge, he worked for the British Antarctic Survey from 1948 right through really until his death in 1998. Wonderful man, and very helpful; in any venture or any questions that we had for him.

And that man needs no introduction – I spent a number of meetings with Ed [Hillary], and in 1994 spent six weeks with him in the Antarctic. This is a much later photograph, probably one of the last of Sir Vivian. He and Ed really never got on after [chuckle] the trans-Antarctic expedition. But that was their last meeting together in Scott Base at an anniversary that I was down there for.

And two interesting characters who I joined in the peninsula area off the bottom of South America – that is Falcon Scott, Scott’s grandson who lives in Northern England; and this is Christina Amundsen, or Christina Jacobsen as she’s known now; she’s the grandniece of Roald Amundsen. Roald didn’t have any children; he didn’t marry and he had no children; but he had brothers, and she is the grandniece. And she was extremely helpful in some of my research as well.

And the Scott Polar Research Institute – I spent [time] in 2005 … wonderful place for anyone with a polar interest. Any information that you want, you’ve either got the library, the resources, or you’ve got the people that you can meet and talk to, and they gave me a very nice office desk to work from.

And I just wanted to throw that one in as a final photograph – one of the other pleasures in the Antarctic is the wildlife and seeing the little white fur seal there with the pup … the dark pup.

So Rose, thank you very much, and I’m happy to answer any questions.

Question: See a bit of greenery in the photograph there …

Richard: Yeah, yeah – that’s South Georgia … the island of South Georgia. Yeah, there is tussock on South Georgia. The fur seal doesn’t venture that far south; you’ve got more the Weddell seals, the Crabeater seals, and the very rare Ross Seal down south. But the fur seals are in South Georgia; you do get a few in the New Zealand sub-antarctic islands, but as you know, most of them … I mean, reached the point of extinction in sealing days because of their skin. But they are coming back on South Georgia particularly, in huge numbers, and now the British government has got this embarrassing situation of thinking they need to do a cull.

Question: Is there any evidence that Scott’s men and Amundsen’s men met in the Antarctic?

Richard: Yes they did. Scott had another party known as the Eastern Party, led by Campbell … Victor Campbell. There were six of them and Raymond Priestley was part it. They were going to go out to explore King Edward VII Land, and they went over in the ‘Terra Nova’ to land the party and they came across Amundsen in the Bay of Whales. They met, they had a meal together, they discussed their expeditions very guardedly; but Campbell decided that they couldn’t really make a base there, not with Amundsen making his base there. So they sailed back to McMurdo, left a message for Scott, who at this time was out doing a depot on the ice shelf, and then sailed north and became the Northern party. And they landed at Cape Adare on Ridley Beach there, and built their hut alongside of Borchgrevink’s. But that’s right, yes – his men did meet Amundsen, quite unexpectedly and to some embarrassment, but then they sailed back to McMurdo.

Question: Is there any reason again why Amundsen went from Australia or Tasmania? ‘Cause I don’t know if he left from there, but he certainly made his announcement from the Hadley Hotel in Hobart. Is there any reason why he used Tasmania rather than New Zealand? Or why Scott used New Zealand compared to, say, Tasmania?

Richard: I can only really speculate on that – it’s not recorded. I’ve not seen it anywhere, but I would get the feeling that New Zealand was Scott’s base, and he might not be too welcome in New Zealand, so that he decided to go to Australia, where Scott had left from New Zealand and was going to sail back to New Zealand, and Amundsen knew that. But he did not leave from Australia – his last port of call was the Canary Islands sailing down, and he sailed the rest of the distance without making a call at all at any place.

Question: Are there polar bears in the Antarctic?

Richard: No, no. There are no land animals of any description in the Antarctic. What’s interesting … there are no penguins in the Arctic either.

Rose: How is it that New Zealand has a base in Antarctica?

Richard: Well it’s historical; it goes right back. The British, by Order in Council in 1908, annexed their area, so to speak, of the Antarctic, which was the Peninsula area, because that was discovered by Biscoe … John Biscoe in 1831. And they decided that because of commercial interests, particularly whaling and sealing, that they really needed to stake a claim, which they did do in 1908. And then … as I was talking to Jim here earlier … Scott and Shackleton of course, came down to this area; and then the Norwegians came in 1923 to start whaling in the Ross Sea area. And New Zealand became concerned that the Norwegians might stake a claim. And the British were concerned, so what the British did then was form the Ross Dependency and annexed it accordingly by Order in Council and designated the governor general of New Zealand to be governor of the Ross Sea Dependency, or Ross Dependency. So in 1923 we were the second nation to … you might say, annex part of the Antarctic. Australia did theirs in 1932, and they annexed all that part of the coast south of Australia. Just as a matter of interest, Australia claim the biggest section of the continent … forty-two percent of it. The French claim a little section; the Norwegians do claim a section. And then in the Peninsula area you’ve got a conflict, because both Argentina and Chile claim the same areas now that Britain do, so there’s a little bit of overlap there. And there’s a large area that’s not claimed.

Rose: Does America itself claim a piece, or have they just got the base?

Richard: No, No – during the Cold War and during that era of 1956-‘58 when the IGY year [International Geophysical Year] and the TAE [Trans-Antarctic Expedition] were going on, it was always thought that the Americans would claim a section, but they decided that they wouldn’t do that; that they would reserve the right to go anywhere on the continent and wouldn’t recognise anybody else’s claim. And the Russians did the same thing, so to this day neither Russia nor the Americans do, although Russia claims that they should have a right to the whole continent, because it was their sailor, Bellingshausen, who was first to sight it. So it’s all academic.

Question: Is there any reason why Scott used Christchurch, rather than say Invercargill or Bluff? ‘Cause I believe he did call into Port Chalmers at the [port?] for coal?

Richard: Yes, he coaled the ship at that point, yeah. I think because he had called there in the Discovery Expedition; and his agent lived in Christchurch and there was a lot of contact with people who could supply the ship. He took a lot of mutton, for instance, and there was a dry dock there as well which he could then lift the ‘Terra Nova’ up and have the ship cleaned and examined before they headed south.

Question: Could you tell me how high above sea level is the South Pole?

Richard: Ten thousand feet. Yeah, Antarctica’s the highest continent in the world. The average for the whole continent is seven and a half thousand feet, but where the Pole is it’s just on ten thousand feet; just maybe a fraction under ten thousand feet. It’s a lot of ice – you know, in areas it’s over two miles … say three kilometres … thick, so that this is why the global warming people are concerned that if the ice cap on the continent entirely melts, you know, the oceans of the world will rise by eighty metres. There’s a lot of ice there. Ninety percent of the world’s fresh water is locked up in that ice.

Question: And what’s your opinion of that opinion?

Richard: I mean global warming is happening; I think the big question is, are we responsible for it? That’s what’s the debatable issue.

Question: Because it’s happening, what do you foresee is the future for Antarctica? Do you think that that Ross Ice sea will melt away? [Chuckle]

Richard: It’s a tough question, isn’t it? [Chuckles] I mean what we’re seeing at the moment now is in the Peninsula area, the average temperatures have risen and we’ve seen the Wordie Ice Shelf disappear quite a few years ago. But in recent years, as you’ve probably read, the Larsen Ice Shelves have started breaking up. Larsen A disappeared quite a while ago, Larsen B was the big collapse about four years ago; and we have seen, you know, some of the glaciers speed up as they melted, more ice has been dropping into the sea. Essentially East Antarctica, which is the major part of the continent hasn’t changed. In fact the deposition of snow is greater, and temperatures have been colder, so it’s confusing … one part is warming, but the other part isn’t.

But what we do know with history and looking back with, you know, say paleoclimatology, is that the one thing that’s consistent is the world’s climate changes. It’s changed from times where there’s been no ice caps, to times when there has been ice, and in the state that we’re in now to a full-blown ice age. We know, for instance, in the middle of the last ice age, it was technically possible to walk from New Zealand to the South Pole. The whole Southern Ocean was frozen; and we’ve got the glacial evidence of course, in our South Island lakes and in the fiords of Fiordland. We really have better evidence in the Northern Hemisphere, where we know the ice sheets came across Asia and came down over Canada and America. But of course, when the ocean thaws out, we’ll be losing evidence of where we’re going and what we have, and the land masses in the Southern Ocean of course, apart from the Antarctic, are minimal.

Question: If one wants to go down there, either working or as a tourist, what are the options? Like New Zealand – do so many go down a year, or do you have to be doing some kind of research project?

Richard: It’s difficult as an individual. The nations of the Treaty regard it pretty carefully. It’s regarded as a continent for science, and the scientists like to think it’s their preserve; so to be involved with it, you really need to be part of a government programme. It doesn’t stop the private adventurer or explorer going, although you can’t use you know, any of the government bases or airstrips and that sort of thing. But each year there are a number of tour ships that go down. There’s one that goes from New Zealand from Bluff; there’s one from Australia, the ‘Southern Aurora’ go[es] from Hobart; the majority go from the bottom of South America … go from Ushuaia in the Beagle Channel at Cape Horn there, ’cause the distance is shorter – it’s only six-hundred miles across the Drake Passage to the Peninsula. And on an estimate they say that anything up to about ten thousand people will visit the continent each year on ships, and the majority of them will view the continent from the ships; so that the number that you might say will go to the continent and will do expeditions and will actually sledge and advance any distance into the continent is extremely small. But it can be done, and there’s a group called Polar Logistics who operate out of Punta Arenas; they will fly you on an Ilyushin 76 Russian aircraft, you’ll land on the plateau at Patriot Hills, and you can then, you know, do any adventure that you want to do from there. And most who go there are venturing to climb Mount Vincent which is the highest mountain in the Antarctic. Yeah – some of course will do their sledge to the Pole as an adventure, and we had a couple of New Zealanders do it recently.

Question: That altitude down there … how does that affect you if you’re going to work in this high altitude, your breathing can be affected …

Richard: Absolutely.

… especially if you’re carrying a heavy load.

Richard: Yeah, it does. In the colder temperatures, especially in the Antarctic, ten thousand feet say, would be equivalent to about fifteen or sixteen thousand feet in a more tropical location. The amount of oxygen in the atmosphere’s [cough] less in the colder areas. So when it’s that cold, say -40C, you’ve got less oxygen, so it is harder. There is a barometric chamber at McMurdo, to fly people out from the Pole who do suffer. We know that Shackleton, for instance, got the first signs of altitude sickness with headaches. But yeah, there are one or two people who go down that [who] do get affected each season, and it is a problem. For those of course who are doing sledging expeditions, you know, it is a problem for them too. But today there are some modern drugs that you can take to help you.

[Next question inaudible – relates to the men eating in different messes or wardrooms]

Richard: Scott was very much a Royal Naval man, to the extent that he didn’t like merchant navy men; and Shackleton of course was a merchant navy man. And Shackleton in his expeditions didn’t make any distinction; all the men ate together and he treated them all equally, whereas Scott, very much the Royal Navy man, made the distinction that the mess was for the men … the sailors … and that the wardroom was for the officers. And he carried that right through, and he[’d] issue orders accordingly. Thomas Glisshold, when I managed to speak to somebody who knew him, said that in the whole time that he was in the Antarctic with Scott, Scott only spoke to him twice. Any instructions were handed down the chain of command. So I guess you can say the Royal Navy prevailed – I mean at that time the Royal Navy ruled the world.

Question: How important was the fact that a lot of the men had no sledding experience?  And compare that with Amundsen’s team … probably all of them did.

Richard: Mm, mm. And they were all expert dog drivers, and they all were dressed for the polar conditions. In fact if you’ve read Amundsen’s account, at one stage they took their furs off – they were too hot, whereas Scott’s men were continually cold. They had Burberry which, you know, was manufactured in London; and Jaeger for wool and undergarments. And they did have the reindeer fur mitts, but they made a mistake – they took it off the adult beast, not off the young animal, so that they were not as effective. And the same with their sleeping bags; and their boots were another problem again. Whereas Amundsen had it all, you know … he’d spent years and years perfecting his gear and perfecting his equipment.

Question: So it’s mostly ignorance in Scott’s case, perhaps with a tinge of arrogance.

Richard: In my book I broach this point – I know it’s a contentious point and I’ve been tackled on it a number of times; but it was very difficult in those days to tell a Royal Naval Captain what to do. [Chuckles] Who dared tell a Royal Naval Captain? I mean, they literally ruled the world; I mean you know, I made the comment that really, ‘nature was no match for the might of the Royal Navy’. Dare I say it, but you know, that’s what it was like. And there was so much information available to Scott; and I’ve, you know, gone into that in some detail in the book, that he ignored. And there were so many people who could’ve offered help. I mean, he never spoke to Shackleton again – he focused on why Shackleton was so successful. What he should’ve done was focused on why Shackleton failed. Why didn’t Shackleton get there? He turned around ninety-seven miles short. That’s what he should have focused on. So that’s why he took ponies. And he had experience with dogs in the Discovery Expedition; didn’t know how to drive them; didn’t know how to tether them, or care for them; and they all died. So as far as Scott was concerned, dogs, you know, were not worth having, so he didn’t want them. Although on the ‘Terra Nova’ Expedition he took Meares … Cecil Meares … who was a proven dog expert; and embarrassingly, Meares showed time and time again how effective the dogs were because with all the different forms of transport they were all going to go at different speeds. So Scott had it arranged that Meares would wait at the campsite of that night, and would leave an hour after everybody else had left so that for the next night they would all arrive at the same time together, roughly. Time and time again Meares would overtake him; Scott didn’t like it at all.

Question: What was Amundsen’s attitude towards [?]

Richard: To his men?

Questioner: And to his party? English tend to very much, in my experience in the merchant navy, tend to be in the good old days, very class conscious; whereas the Norwegians tend to be a bit more socialistic, and you all ate in one sort of mess … did that come through in Amundsen’s expedition?

Richard: No … no. I mean, the men recognised Amundsen as their leader, but they all ate together; they all communed together; and he was very much in touch with all of his men. You know, the only time that Amundsen really fell out with his men was with Johansen, when he headed south too early, as I said, when it was too cold and he came back. Johansen let strip [let rip] at Amundsen that he’d made a stupid decision, and he tackled Amundsen in front of all the other men; he embarrassed Amundsen, and that’s why Amundsen dropped him from the polar team. He left him behind, he didn’t take him. But that, to my knowledge, is the only time you know, that there was difficulty with Amundsen and his men. The rest of the men … I mean, they were with him in the Northwest Passage. And then in 1918 Helmer Hanssen and two of the others were with him on the Maud Expedition sailing the Northeast Passage as well, so you know, they were a bit like Shackleton’s men – they stuck with him.

Well, on his last expedition, eight men who were with him on the Endurance Expedition were with him on the Quest expedition, including Worsley, the New Zealander.

Jim Watt: Richard, I wonder if we still underestimate the Antarctic environment a bit? To me it was manifest at the Erebus disaster, when we had Air New Zealand sending pilots down there who had not flown in Antarctica before and did not appreciate the whiteout conditions. So, are we still sort of underestimating what that continent can do?

Richard: I think for those who’ve had no experience down there, yes we do, we do … we do, hugely. It is a continent that … you are a brief visitor in the area and you are subject to the Antarctic weather patterns. I mean, if you get a nice day, love it, because it’s rare. And your whole movement, your whole planning of everything that you do is conditioned by the weather. I, some years ago, climbed across the mountains of South Georgia in Shackleton’s footsteps, after his boat journey. And the first time we did it, we arrived on the beach in King Haakon Bay and we pitched our tent that night. We didn’t move for six days – that night a storm came through and just wiped us all out. You know, we finished our food and we ran out of this and we ran out of that; and at the end of it we had to, you know, climb across the mountains without … we were like Shackleton, we were getting desperate. The ship had gone, it wasn’t coming back. And then as we got to the last mountain, there’s the next storm coming, so we had a respite for those few days to get across, but we’d already spent six days on the beach; we just got ashore. So the weather totally dictates what you can do.

And even today it dictates. When I was with the Americans and we were flying the Hercules from Willy Airfield to the South Pole to supply the South Pole to build its new base, the temperature dropped below -50C. Now, at -50C the hydraulics oil freezes, and the New Zealand Hercules just sat on the ground and … can’t fly. The Americans have quite an interesting attitude; money is not an object, so their attitude was, ‘what do we do to overcome this problem?’ So they threw $3million at the problem and came up with this synthetic waxed oil, and they could fly the plane below that temperature. And as some of you may recall, several years ago there was woman doctor at the South Pole who was developing cancer; and they made a mid-winter flight to drop … well those temperatures were well below -50C, but because they’d developed that synthetic, they were able to do it. Yeah, ‘cause when they opened the bay doors to drop everything out, they thought they would not be able to close them again; they might have to fly back to New Zealand with the [chuckles] doors open. But they did it; but that just gives you an indication, it dictates everything you do.

In 1999 I was there; we had the ‘Green Wave’ arrive which is a [an] ice-strengthened ship. It’s the container ship and it comes in with all the supplies for McMurdo, and then the South Pole and the other bases. And we worked twelve hour shifts to unload it and to re-load it, because all your rubbish and all your debris goes back on the ship. So there’s no fires, there’s no dumping of rubbish on the sea ice like we used to do. And we got to the stage where the weather was closing in, and we’d just unloaded thirty mattresses for the quarters and the weather hit us really quickly, so we all high-tailed it inside and waited the storm out. And the next day we went out and the mattresses had gone; so somewhere across the continent [chuckles] there’s thirty mattresses. [laughter] But it can happen that quickly.

And for those who work in the bases now … I mean, the bases are comfortable; they’re luxury, well-serviced; and I mean, the scientists and the people who work there these days really have no idea of how bad it can be outside. because first, they’re not allowed outside; there are conditions where you can’t leave the base. There are some conditions where you can leave the base, but not go beyond you know, thirty feet, and that sort of thing. So it’s very, very controlled, so that the person who does go out and say, do adventure work and exploring, you know, will experience those conditions. But yeah, it dictates everything you do.

Question: To bring Scott back nearer home, is [did] his memorial in Christchurch survive the earthquake?

Richard: No. No, no, it did fall down. No, it has, yes; so there’ll need to be some work. And that was done by his wife … that was done by Kathleen. She was responsible for it.

Questioner: When was that put up?

Richard: That was put up … oh, gosh, now you’re testing me. It would’ve been a long time ago; I’m just trying to think … I think it was after the war … the Second World War.

Questioner: It was there in 1950.

Question: There’s a memorial too in Port Chalmers; do you know anything about that?

Richard: I’ve seen it, but I don’t know when that was put up. ‘Cause there’s also a memorial in the gardens at Queenstown, and that was put up soon after. The mayor of Queenstown did that in ‘bout 1914. There’s quite a number of monuments around the world to Scott.

Comment: Interesting that there is, and that he’s held in such high regard in a way, when you think really, he was perhaps not a very successful explorer.

Richard: Well, you know as I say, I think the Royal Geographical Society Committee who were responsible for the publication did a … [chuckle] an amazingly good job. You know, they just hid so much of what really and truly happened. But I mean, the tragedy is that they didn’t need to die, if Scott had only even listened; I mean, even to the extent that if he didn’t add the fifth man they might’ve made it back, ‘cause they probably [would’ve] made the eleven miles to the depot. But look, there’s a lot of ‘ifs’.

Jim: Well I think Rose has been very astute in choosing the date today for our talk. It’s 18th May, which means it’s the 17th May in Norway, which is the Norwegian National Day. I was down in Norsewood on Sunday; Norsewood always celebrates its heritage. And I was talking to the Norwegian Consul from Canberra, and he was commenting on the fact that he was a Scottish-Norwegian who was now based in Australia, and he was referring to the fact that another Norwegian-Scot was a gentlemen with the name of Colin Archer. Colin Archer is a famous maritime naval architect, who designed the ‘Fram’, which was Amundsen’s ship; and it has the great virtue of actually popping out of the ice when the water freezes. So when it freezes the hull is actually lifted up and the ship survives, and then it floats down again. So it was a very cunning bit of design work behind the ‘Fram’. You can still see the ‘Fram’ in Oslo, and Scott’s ‘Discovery’ in Dundee.

Richard: Scotland – that’s right, Dundee.

Jim: So anyway, Norwegian Day … we salute Amundsen [chuckles] and we salute Scott too, for what he did; and Shackleton. Doctor Richard Reaney, we hope you will come again because I know you have other stories to tell us, and it’s been a fascinating morning.

Richard: Jim, thanks very much.

[Applause]